Imperfect Copies
by Deflare
Summary: 2183: The geth intercept a message that changes history. 2185: Commander Shepard wakes up from the dead in two different parts of the galaxy at once, leaving the two of them to figure out what happened and who they really are as the Reapers loom.


**Imperfect Copies**

_[Author's Notes: Spoilers for _Mass Effect_ and _Mass Effect 2_. Inspired by Sonata of Hades' _Cold Lazarus_. Will contain OCs. Rated T for expected violence and language; rating subject to change.]_

Prologue: Point of Divergence

Tali'Zorah nar Rayya cursed as she dove into cover behind a pile of crates. Tiny plasma rounds ripped through the air where she had just stood with a distinctive _whizz_, melting holes into the floor of the prefabricated structure where Commander John Shepard's team had tracked down the geth. The structure had probably been placed there to give the synthetics shelter from the harsh heat of Grissom, which raised the surface temperature of the moon Solcrum to temperatures unbearable even for machines.

Tali peeked over the edge of her cover, and spotted the movement of a large shape on the upper balcony. A geth juggernaut was lurking up there, occasionally sending a rocket at Shepard's position. The commander seemed to be taking the barrage well enough, ducking behind a deceptively sturdy wall whenever he saw the streak of fire. There was still the chance that he would get unlucky, though, and get hit by one of the anti-personnel rockets. Tali wasn't about to let that happen.

She had been working on the hacking program since the fight on Therum, when the armature had almost ended their mission to stop Saren as soon as it began. If it worked right, it should take control over the hardware of a geth's body, putting it under her control until the programs at the core of the geth's rudimentary sapience corrected for the error. The geth would start firing on its allies or, failing that, stand frozen and stop shooting at her team members. The quarian's fingers flew over the haptic interface of her omnitool, bringing the program to bear. Pointing her omnitool at the juggernaut, Tali muttered a prayer under her breath and pressed the button that would start the hack.

The effects were immediate and gratifying. The juggernaut jerked, frozen with its rocket launcher raised. It shuddered in place for a moment before turning to fire its payload at an unfortunate trooper that had been advancing toward Urdnot Wrex's position. The trooper exploded in a burst of metal and white fluid, the smell of burnt plastic filling the air. The krogan bellowed in triumph and moved out of cover, shotgun booming and biotic corona flaring as he took advantage of the startled geth's hesitation.

The fight ended quickly after that. With the juggernaut's assistance, the other geth were quickly destroyed. The battle culminated with Tali, Wrex, and Shepard all focusing their fire on the juggernaut as it finally shook off Tali's hack. As the large robot died, however, something strange happened. All three organics grimaced as a loud screech of static came over their comms, catching the geth data burst as meaningless sound. Without her bidding, Tali's suit computer transformed the data burst into an audiovisual file—a female quarian with no exosuit on stage, singing operatically in a language that Tali's translator couldn't decipher (_Probably one of the many languages that died with most of the race during the exodus_, she thought grimly).

Tali saw Shepard shaking his head, before he turned to her. "Tali? What the hell was that?"

The quarian shook her own head in reply. "I'm not sure. It was a video, showing a quarian opera. Why the geth would send out a message like that…" She could only shrug, a gesture she had picked up from the _Normandy_'s engineers.

"That's what quarian opera sounds like?" came Wrex's rumbled comment. "No wonder your people don't have a reputation for their singing voices."

She was about to snap back at the krogan, but was silenced by Shepard's stern look. When he knew that his squadmates weren't going to get into another argument, he spoke again. "There's nothing we can do about it now. Spread out and secure the area. Let's see if the geth left anything interesting behind."

"Yes, Commander." Both of Shepard's teammates nodded, and got to work.

* * *

Beyond the Perseus Veil, Passive Reconnaissance Platform 6988 fired its maneuvering thrusters for two seconds. The course adjustment would prevent the platform from falling into the sun of the star system it was orbiting for another seventy-nine orbits. The calculations for the adjustment had been completed by the 17,923 geth runtimes inhabiting the platform moments before the opportune moment to start the burn had presented itself; a few seconds more, and the platform would have had to make another three orbits before its course could be corrected, with a small increase in fuel cost. The conditioned response circuits in the geth programming—legacies of their time as servants of the quarians—rewarded them for their success with an automatically-generated positive feeling that they had learned to equate to the concept of pride, though none knew if it truly mirrored the organic emotion.

The geth runtimes of PRP6988 had no way to know it at the time, but their timely resolution of the course correction had changed galactic history.

* * *

_[The following transcript is a representation of the exchanges between the runtimes of PRP6988 in a format understandable by humans.]_

[Detecting transmission relayed through comm buoy 43433A. Origin: Armstrong Cluster, Grissom System.]

[Encryption key recognized as Setya'Nali vas Sorya's _Alyette_.]

[Encryption key out of date among the geth; runtime proposes that transmission originates from the heretics.]

**[Consensus achieved. Signal of heretic origin.]**

[Decryption in progress; decryption complete. Analyzing data.]

[Data gathered during heretic reconnaissance efforts outside Perseus Veil. They were studying organic races' response to Nazara and its subordinates. Primary organic opposition to Nazara appears to be one member of Special Tactics and Reconnaissance organization, his ship, and his team. Large amounts of data gathered on this human, "Commander John Shepard."]

[Platform has gathered information on this species. Humans: Levo-amino acids, asarioid build, made first contact 2657 galactic standard calendar, have quickly achieved position of galactic prominence. Runtime offers turians as comparison case, though human case has occurred over a shorter time period.]

**[Consensus accepts human-turian analogy.]**

[Runtime poses query: Why have organic races only mobilized human-John-Shepard to respond to Old Machine threat? One ship is clearly not enough to succeed at its task.]

[…]

**[Consensus achieved. Insufficient data to answer runtime query. Relaying query to geth hubs for further consideration.]**

[…]

[…]

[…]

[Geth hub response received. Hub found insufficient data to answer query, found sufficient cause for further investigation. Consensus voted to create long-range reconnaissance mobile platform to move beyond Perseus Veil and gather data. Designated runtimes are to be uploaded to platform designated LRRMPx1. Beginning runtime transfer to docked starship. We wish you good luck.]

* * *

A small pod, smaller than a Citadel-standard escape pod, detached from PRP6988. Aboard the pod sat a hub containing 340 geth runtimes uploaded from the recon platform, so chosen for their experience with perceiving, investigating, and decrypting alien signals that filtered through thin spots in the Perseus Veil. The craft was also home to another 168 runtimes that guided the pod and controlled the repair drones that occasionally detached to repair micrometeor damage to the exterior and wear-and-tear on the interior. Carrying an element zero core just large enough to guide its small mass, the pod powered toward the nearest mass relay, its 'passengers' preparing to become part of the Geth Collective's first expedition beyond the Veil since the Morning War over three hundred years before.

In another time and another place, these same runtimes would board the same pod to embark on the same expedition. However, they would do so six months later. From the perspective of galactic history, those six months would make all the difference.


End file.
